Famous Women You've Never Heard Of

[lucimay]

thanks for reposting Agippina, Loric!!!

[sgt.null]

Jeannette Rankin
(June 11, 1880 - May 18, 1973)
first American woman elected to Congress (November 6, 1916); suffragist, peace activist, reformer
Jeannette Pickering Rankin was born on June 11, 1880. Her father, John Rankin, was a rancher and lumber merchant and her mother, Olive Pickering, a former schoolteacher. She spent her first years on the ranch, then moved with the family to Missoula where she attended public school. She was the oldest of eleven children. Rankin attended Montana State University at Missoula and graduated in 1902 with a bachelor of science degree in biology. She was a schoolteacher, seamstress and studied furniture design -- looking for some work to which she could commit herself. When her father died in 1902, he left money to Rankin, paid out over her lifetime. On a long trip to Boston in 1904 to visit with her brother at Harvard and with other relatives, she was inspired by slum conditions to take up the new field of social work. She became a resident in a San Francisco Settlement House for four months, then entered the New York School of Philanthropy (later, to become the Columbia School of Social Work). She returned to the west to become a social worker in Spokane, Washington, in a children's home. Social work did not, however, hold her interest long - she only lasted a few weeks at the children's home. Next, Rankin studied at the University of Washington in Seattle and became involved in the woman suffrage movement in 1910. Visiting Montana, Rankin became the first woman to speak before the Montana legislature, where she surprised the spectators and legislators alike with her speaking ability. She organized and spoke for the Equal Franchise Society. Rankin then moved to New York, and continued her work on behalf of women's rights. During these years, she began her lifelong relationship with Katherine Anthony. She went to work for the New York Woman Suffrage Party and in 1912 she became the field secretary of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Rankin and Anthony were among the thousands of suffragists at the 1913 suffrage march in Washington, D.C., before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.
Rankin returned to Montana to help organize the successful Montana suffrage campaign in 1914. To do so, she gave up her position with the NAWSA. As war in Europe loomed, Rankin turned her attention to work for peace, and in 1916, ran for one of the two seats in Congress from Montana as a Republican. Her brother served as campaign manager and helped finance the campaign. Jeannette Rankin won, though the papers first reported that she lost the election -- and Jeannette Rankin thus became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, and the first woman elected to a national legislature in any western democracy.
Rankin used her fame and notoriety in this "famous first" position to work for peace and women's rights and against child labor, and to write a weekly newspaper column. Only four days after taking office, Jeannette Rankin made history in yet another way: she voted against U.S. entry into World War I. She violated protocol by speaking during the roll call before casting her vote, announcing "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war." Some of her colleagues in NAWSA -- notably Carrie Chapman Catt -- criticized her vote as opening the suffrage cause to criticism as impractical and sentimental. Rankin did vote, later in her term, for several pro-war measures, as well as working for the political reforms including civil liberties, suffrage, birth control, equal pay and child welfare. In 1917, she opened the congressional debate on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which passed the House in 1917 and the Senate in 1918, to become the 19th Amendment after it was ratified by the states. But Rankin's first anti-war vote sealed her political fate. When she was gerrymandered out of her district, she ran for the Senate, lost the primary, launched a third party race, and lost overwhelmingly. After the war ended, Rankin continued to work for peace through the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and also began work for the National Consumers' League. She worked, at the same time, on the staff of the American Civil Liberties Union. After a brief return to Montana to help her brother run -- unsuccessfully -- for the Senate, she moved to a farm in Georgia. She returned to Montana every summer, her legal residence. From her base in Georgia, Jeannette Rankin became Field Secretary of the WILPF and lobbied for peace. When she left the WILPF she formed the Georgia Peace Society. She lobbied for the Women's Peace Union, working for an antiwar constitutional amendment. She left the Peace Union, and began working with the National Council for the Prevention of War. She also lobbied for American cooperation with the World Court and for labor reforms and an end to child labor. In 1935, when a college in Georgia offered her the position of Peace Chair, she was accused of being a Communist, and ended up filing a libel suit against the Macon newspaper. The court eventually declared her, as she said, "a nice lady." In the first half of 1937, she spoke in 10 states, giving 93 speeches for peace. She supported the America First Committee, but decided that lobbying was not the most effective way to work for peace. By 1939, she had returned to Montana and was running for Congress again, supporting a strong but neutral America in yet another time of impending war. Elected with a small plurality, Jeannette Rankin arrived in Washington in January as one of six women in the House, two in the Senate. When, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress voted to declare war against Japan, Jeannette Rankin once again voted "no" to war. She also, once again, violated long tradition and spoke before her roll call vote, this time saying "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else" as she voted alone against the war resolution. She was denounced by the press and her colleagues, and barely escaped an angry mob. She believed that Roosevelt had deliberately provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1943, Rankin went back to Montana rather than run for Congress again (and surely be defeated). She took care of her mother and traveled worldwide, including to India and Turkey, promoting peace, and tried to found a woman's commune on her Georgia farm. In 1968, she led more than five thousand women in a protest in Washington, DC, demanding the U.S. withdraw from Vietnam, heading up the group calling itself the Jeannette Rankin Brigade. She was active in the antiwar movement, often invited to speak or honored by the young antiwar activists and feminists.

Jeannette Rankin died in 1973 in California.

[Rincewind]

Rincey said

MOD EDIT etc

Spoiler

Gauge is well-known for her anal scenes, blowjobs, facial, creampies, double penetration, double anal, and ass-to-mouth. It is claimed that what really sets her apart from other anal stars is her "handstand ass ****" where she receives anal intercourse upside down while standing on her hands.

i hate to bring this post back to everyone's conciousness but i cant help but wonder why there was a need to asterix out the one swear word in the context of the post!!

my mother deserves a mention. while she failed to raise a well-rounded son(it wasn't her fault-it was mine) she did a good job with my brother and sis. and she cooks a mean lasagne.

lol, well, it must have happened automatically

[sgt.null]

Before there was Rosa Parks, there was Irene Morgan. She's not as well known as Rosa Parks, whose name is synonymous with the start of the civil rights movement, but their stories are remarkably similar. Both African-American women refused to follow the segregation laws that required them to give their bus seats to white people. Both were arrested. And, eventually, both were supported by the Supreme Court, which heard their cases and struck down those laws. The rulings were turning points in the battle for civil rights. The difference is that Irene Morgan's act of courage occurred in Virginia in 1944, 11 years before Rosa Parks' arrest, which sparked a 381-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. "If something happens to you which is wrong, the best thing to do is have it corrected in the best way you can," said Morgan, who turned 84 in 2001. "The best thing for me to do was to go to the Supreme Court." In July 1944, Morgan was a 27-year-old mother of two, living in Gloucester County. She had been ill, and one Sunday morning she boarded a Greyhound bus for Baltimore, where she was to see a doctor. She sat down four rows from the back of the bus, in the section for "colored" people. When a white couple needed seats, the driver told Morgan and her seatmate to move farther back. Morgan said no. The bus driver stopped in Middlesex County and summoned the sheriff, who tried to arrest Morgan. She tore up the arrest warrant, kicked the sheriff and fought with the deputy who tried to drag her off the bus. He succeeded, however, and Morgan was jailed for resisting arrest and violating Virginia's segregation law. When she went to court, Morgan pleaded guilty to the first charge and paid a $100 fine. She pleaded not guilty to the second charge, but was found guilty and fined $10. Morgan could have quietly paid the fine, but she appealed her case, and her lawyers took it all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1946, the justices ruled 6-1 that Virginia's law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal. "When something's wrong, it's wrong. It needs to be corrected," said Morgan, whose married name is Kirkaldy. But the ruling didn't have an immediate effect. Just a few months after the court's decision, a group of 15 men, blacks and whites, decided to test it. In 1947, they traveled throughout the South on buses, with the black men sitting up front and the white men sitting in the back. Twelve of the men, both black and white, were arrested during the "Journey of Reconciliation," the first Freedom Rides in America. Morgan's story has been mostly overlooked by history books, but she has been collecting honors in the past few years. In 2000, Morgan was honored by Gloucester County during its 350th anniversary celebration. And in 2001, President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal.
But perhaps the most irrefutable sign that Irene Morgan is a permanent part of U.S. history came when Morgan saw "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebeck asking a question about her on the show. "I just came in the door and saw it," said Morgan, who is a "Jeopardy" fan. "There was my picture, there on the television."


2000, ED BETZ
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

[lucimay]

great story Sarge!!

[sgt.null]

thanks, feel like i have hijacked your thread... but here is more.



I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who sayes, my hand a needle better fits,
A Poets Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong;
For such despighte they cast on female wits:
If what I doe prove well, it wo'nt advance,
They'l say its stolen, or else, it was by chance.
- Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) is one of the most important figures in the history of American Literature. She is considered by many to be the first American poet, and her first collection of poems, "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts", doesn't contain any of her best known poems, it was the first book written by a woman to be published in the United States. Mrs. Bradstreet's work also serves as a document of the struggles of a Puritan wife against the hardships of New England colonial life, and in some way is a testament to plight of the women of the age. Anne's life was a constant struggle, from her difficult adaptation to the rigors of the new land, to her constant battle with illness.

It is clear to see that Anne's faith was exemplary, and so was her love for children and her husband, Governor Simon Bradstreet. Anne's poems were written mainly during the long periods of loneliness while Simon was away on political errands. Anne, who was a well educated woman, also spent much time with her children, reading to them and teaching them as her father had taught her when she was young. While it is rather easy for us to view Puritan ideology in a bad light because of it's attitude towards women and strict moral code, her indifference to material wealth, her humility and her spirituality, regardless of religion, made her into a positive, inspirational role model for any of us.

Another one of Anne's most important qualities was her strong intuition, although only subtly hinted at in her work, probably for fear of reprisal from the deeply religious Puritan community, one cannot help but feel her constant fascination with the human mind, and spirit, and inner guidance.

Her style is deceptively simple, yet speaks of a woman of high intelligence and ideals who was very much in love, and had unconditional faith. While it was difficult for women to air their views in the 17th Century, Anne Bradstreet did so with ease, as her rich vocabulary and polyvalent knowledge brought a lyrical, yet logical quality to her work which made it pleasant for anyone to read.

[Fist and Faith]

Fist wrote:

I wonder how many libraries have that name. There's one at the college in New Paltz, NY.

That's where I used to work! Then I moved to Florida. Boy, do I miss that job. It was excellent!
I lived in Highland, though.

I completely forgot that I posted that. And, of course, we already discussed this in chatbane. Annoying that another Watcher used to live so close!

[lucimay]

if you DON'T already know about Phyllis...you should.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly

Schlafly is the author of twenty books. Most are on topics of interest to political conservatives, but they include child care and phonics education. She continues to be influential within the Republican Party, and was responsible for some socially conservative language in the Republican National Convention's platforms as recently as 2004.

disclaimer: altho i find her remarkable (she basically single-handedly defeated ERA), i am NOT a Phyllis fan...(keep your friends close and your enemies closer)

[taraswizard]

Leigh Brackett (1915 - 1978) SF writer and film writer. Leigh most well known work is as screenwriter for the second Star Wars film, The empire strikes back, and she died shortly before she could complete that work. However, Ms Bracket had started writing SF in the 1940s and her first novel was No good from a corpse 1944. Perhaps her best known SF novel was The long tomorrow, a post apocalyptic novel dealing with the reestablishment of science and technology.

Leigh Brackett worked extensively as a screenwriter in films and TV. She was a screenwriter along with William Faulkner on the The big sleep. Her other Hollywood credits included episodes of The Rockford files, Rio bravo, El dorado, Hatari, The long goodbye.

[lucimay]

nice one, taraswizard!!

[sgt.null]

"If I'm a lousy writer,
then an awful lot of people
have lousy taste."
--Grace Metalious



She was born Marie Grace DeRepentigny on September 8, 1924, in Manchester, New Hampshire. She was born into poverty and a broken home. Although she was blessed with that greatest of gifts -- imagination -- there was no reason to expect greatness for young Grace. But she was driven to write and she kept at it. In her teens she married George Metalious, became a housewife and mother, lived in near squalor -- and she continued to write.

In 1956 her novel Peyton Place was published and nothing was ever the same again. Things changed drastically for Grace and her family and it's not stretching it to say that things changed drastically for lots of passionate readers who snuck around with Grace's racy book. Maybe the whole universe changed because of that book. For a while there in the late 1950s, people on other planets were probably sneaking around with dog-eared copies of Peyton Place in their hip-pockets, assuming people on other planets even have hip-pockets, which may be on their foreheads for all we know, but we won't go into that here.

Grace Metalious -- the "Pandora in bluejeans" -- was said by some to be a lousy writer and a purveyer of filth, but time goes by, things change, and then the whole game starts over again with new rules. Now, nearly half a century later, Metalious is recognized as the writer whose most famous book changed the publishing industry forever. Maybe she didn't know she was a revolutionary -- maybe none of us knew it at the time -- but she was.

The Grace Metalious story is a fascinating one, almost as interesting as the stories she told in her books. For anybody who wants to explore deeper inside this writer's personal history, we enthusiastically recommend Emily Toth's Inside Peyton Place: The Life of Grace Metalious, first published by Doubleday in 1981 and recently reissued by University Press of Mississippi.

btw: Manchester is my birthtown.